"The only one who has ever been really mysterious." (Joan Crawford); "Her mystery was as thick as a London fog." (Tallulah Bankhea...d); "In a quick turn of her head, in a frank look, a boyish pout, in that proud glance from lowered lids, so pitying and yet so distant that in others it would be supercilious, in all those expressions of conscious beauty, which when imitated become clumsy, or arrogant, or ridiculous, there is a manifestation of what Hollywood cannot destroy. In the presence of this mystery all that is second-rate can be forgotten." (Cecil Beaton)LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Bible worship, though at its best it may achieve sublimity by keeping its head in the skies, may also make itself both ridiculous ...and dangerous by having its feet off the ground.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of "history" it seems entirely reasonable ...to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time--and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

There were several canal-boats ... passing through the locks, for which we waited. In the forward part of one stood a brawny New H...ampshire man, leaning on his pole, bareheaded and in shirt and trousers only, a rude Apollo of a man, coming down from "that vast uplandish country" to the main; of nameless age, with flaxen hair and vigorous, weather-bleached countenance, in whose wrinkles the sun still lodged, as little touched by the heats and frosts and withering cares of life as a maple of the mountain; an undressed, unkempt, uncivil man, with whom we parlayed awhile, and parted not without a sincere interest in one another. His humanity was genuine and instinctive, and his rudeness only a manner. He inquired, just as we were passing out of earshot, if we had killed anything, and we shouted after him that we had shot a buoy, and could see him for a long while scratching his head in vain to know if he had heard aright.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Under bare Ben Bulben's headIn Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid....An ancestor was rector thereLong years ago, a church stands near,By the road an ancient cross.No marble, no conventional phrase;On limestone quarried near the spotBy his command these words are cut:Cast a cold eyeOn life, on death.Horseman pass by!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »